Tag: indie pop

Well, the full length album is dead. It lived a long and brilliant life. Highlights included work from The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Joanna Newsom, Popol Vuh, AC/DC, and Galantis. But the fact is that nobody is listening to full length albums in 2018.

People are listening to playlists on Spotify, which are often made up mostly of singles from disparate artists. With the exception of the one percent of hardcore music listeners, nobody has the patience to listen to a full length album of music. Even the real music fans I know, who go to concerts with me several times a month, do not listen to full length albums.

But people do want more than singles.

So in 2018, we witnessed the explosion of a form that has come to be called “The EP”. It’s an extremely history-laden name for a short collection of music. An EP usually lasts at least ten minutes, and includes no more than seven individual tracks.

For me, personally, it’s what I listened to most in 2018. When I was listening to Discover Weekly and Release Radar on Spotify, I was seeking out experiences that were more than just a single piece of music, but an hour was usually too much music, even for me.

This is a format that works really well for indie musicians. It’s hard to write an hour of cohesive music that is strong from beginning to end. It’s much easier to write ten to twenty minutes of strong, cohesive music. And each EP can be different. EPs allow artists to explore more than singles or full length albums.

So here’s a playlist I made that consists of tracks from EPs I liked this year. It’s mostly indie electronic music, but there’s some Hip-Hop in there as well and a few tracks by well established artists.